Indoor air quality is a concern for many individuals, and various appliances are sold for conditioning indoor air. Such appliances include, for example, air filtering units, capacitive dust traps, ozone producing appliances, negative ion producing appliances, and air fresheners. While these appliances may ameliorate some environmental conditions, they provide little information about air quality and little ability to customize air treatment to achieve a specific environment objective.
Various types of personal vaporizers have been known in the art for many years. In general, such vaporizers are characterized by heating a solid to a smoldering point, vaporizing a liquid by heat, or nebulizing a liquid by heat and/or by expansion through a nozzle. Such devices are designed to release aromatic materials in the solid or liquid while avoiding high temperatures of combustion and associated formation of tars, carbon monoxide, or other harmful byproducts. Preferably, the device releases a very fine mist with a mouth feel similar to smoke. These devices have primarily been used as personal accessories and little or no use has been made of vaporizing technology for environmental air treatment.
It would be desirable, therefore, to develop new technologies for such applications, that overcome these and other limitations of the prior art, and enhance the utility of analysis equipment and air treatment equipment.